The Road Not Taken
by peroxidepest17
Summary: Doumeki believes the straightest path is the truest.


**Title: **The Road Not Taken  
**Universe:** XXXHolic  
**Theme/Topic:** N/A  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Character/Pairing/s:** DoumekixWatanuki, Yuuko  
**Warnings/Spoilers:** None I can imagine. Just some…OOC and stupidity? XD  
**Word Count: **1,959  
**Summary:** Doumeki believes the straightest path is the truest.  
**Dedication:** kshi and swinku for inspiring me with their inked doujin pages. XD **  
A/N:** Okay so I wrote the first half of this waaaay back in the beginning of December. I think it was a failed attempt at a gift fic. But then I just happened to open it today and look it over and go, "hmmm, I can do something with this!" and then Shiro just happened to bombard me with her ADORABLE CUTE DOUJIN PAGES so then I couldn't _not_ write. It is kind of stupid and disjointed because the two halves were never designed to meet, but bear with me, I'm out of practice. XD  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine, though I wish constantly.  
**Distribution:** Just lemme know.

* * *

She takes great delight in tempting him with all sorts of vague-but-suggestive "what ifs," and while he just as easily turns them back into the "I don't think sos," they're supposed to be, he can't help but wonder as to the_ point_ of her lazy, tantalizing attempts to lure him in if she already knows very well that she'll never be successful in the first place. She _must_ already know, he thinks, because all the times she's told him he'll never set foot in her store sound like foresights to him if anything ever has. But at the same time, there is a persistence about her that seems to like playing with the _possibility _that one day Doumeki will need to enter, that he may one day _possibly_ accept one of those "what ifs" she throws at him with an "okay" instead of the usual "I don't think so." And it makes him wonder—naturally—of what it is that motivates her to do that despite his constant rejections.

Because he knows that everything in this universe has a purpose.

"Oh, you'll definitely, definitely never have to step foot into _my_ shop," she assures him after another attempt to make him make a wish fails—this time asking if he would like her to help him open Watanuki's eyes to the terrifying, wonderful, awkward fate that remains unspoken between them— and while the offer is tempting, it's not _that_ tempting. Ultimately all it really leaves him with is a stray sort of curiosity that makes him wonder why she is so certain he'll never enter _her_ shop every time the issue comes up (i.e. _she _brings it up), like she's toying with words and suggesting that he will one day enter someone else's shop that is not hers, but that will just so happen to be exactly like hers, and wouldn't he like to _know_ about it? At least not right now.

What that has to do with whatever it is that lies between he and Watanuki he is certain he _doesn't_ want to know about, though.

"Can you see the future?" he asks her instead, drolly.

"There's no such thing," she responds with an enigmatic little twitter. "Only fate—everything is already written."

"Then you're just reciting lines," he deduces, and doesn't know if that comforts him or worries him or makes it impossible for him to really care either way.

"Well, of course there are different adaptations, interpretations, etc., etc.," she chuckles, and leans back languorously in one of her asymmetrical, inhuman poses. "Otherwise life… it wouldn't be fun at all." Her eyes gleam up at him, and he knows she finds him interesting somehow, in a different way than Watanuki is interesting maybe, maybe not. But in either case she is the kind of person who likes to—for lack of better word— poke those various adaptations and interpretations with sticks to see if they will shift into a different variation altogether with just a little encouragement. "You'll end up where you're supposed to go regardless, but the path to your destination always has more than one way, Doumeki-kun," she adds, and tosses her hair over her shoulder imperiously.

"But one way is all you need," Doumeki offers pragmatically. "And so I don't need to explore any of your strange detours." The straight path is always the truest—he believes that.

She only smirks at him. "I know. But need and desire are different things, Doumeki. Aren't you ever tempted to see what it would be like to make the two indistinguishable from one another?"

He can't say that he has, really. Because to him, need is need and desire is desire, and while you sometimes desire what you need, you often don't need what you desire. Therein lies the difference.

Thus, though he knows everyone always gets to where they're going eventually and there are a million different ways to get there, Doumeki still thinks the straightest path is always the truest, and that is the only way he needs.

Yuuko sighs at him—pouts even—and tells him he's no fun. No fun at all.

That makes him quirk a small, half smile. "Maybe I'm more interesting in another variation," he says, to placate her.

She grins at that, and Doumeki instantly doesn't like the look in her eye. "You are equally interesting in all variations, just in different ways. Do you want to see?"

"No," he says, quickly.

Except maybe she'd known all along that the conversation would get here, and when Watanuki walks into the room right on cue—out from Doumeki's kitchen with everyone's dinner— Kimihiro takes one look between the two of them, sighs, and asks, "What's going on here?"

Yuuko smiles that cat-smirk smile of hers and folds her hands demurely in her lap (except for not, because even if her hands are demure the slit of her skirt is anything but). "We were just discussing Doumeki," she begins, and Shizuka definitely doesn't like where this is going now, even more than before.

Watanuki however, senses nothing amiss and only scoffs before proceeding to walk right into the trap Yuuko has laid for both of them. "Stupid Doumeki is boring and…stupid," he says, before settling down to serve everyone the food. It smells good. "Let's talk about someone more interesting so the conversation doesn't spoil the taste of the dinner I was slaving away to make," he adds with a snitty little sniff, and Doumeki would slap his palm to his own forehead if he hadn't already known it would just be taken as encouragement for Watanuki to keep going.

Yuuko chuckles as Watanuki hands out rice bowls, and holds hers high overhead, like she's making some sort of demented toast. "I think that was a wish!" she declares in a celebratory manner, and pounds Doumeki heartily on the back with her free hand. "Won't this be fun?"

Then—and only then—does Watanuki realize what he's done. He pales slightly. "Er…what? Yuuko-san, what do you er…what do you mean by that?" he asks, and fights to stay calm.

She glees at them both. "You'll see!"

"WAIT NO I DON'T WANT TO!" Watanuki protests, screaming by rote. So much for calm.

Doumeki only sighs and knows it's hopeless either way at this point, and just because it's the only thing he can do right now, he thrusts his rice bowl back at Watanuki with a quiet, "Pack it better."

Watanuki bristles at him and tells him exactly where he can shove his goddamned rice.

The following week, when they have to deliver a package for Yuuko, they end up weaving behind a mailbox, squeezing through a hole in a fence, and inexplicably, walking through a pair of swinging double doors in Watanuki's local grocer. Once the obstacle course is complete, they blink, take a breath, and suddenly find themselves right outside of Yuuko's shop again, except for not. Well, not exactly, because now there is a Watanuki-who-isn't-Watanuki waiting shyly outside, while a Doumeki-who-isn't-Doumeki unabashedly has his arms around that other-Watanuki's waist.

Watanuki-who-is-Watanuki gapes.

And then promptly whirls on Doumeki-who-is-Doumeki and looks all accusatory. "Whatever you did, undo it!" he shouts, and points to their amorous doppelgangers, all red in the face.

Doumeki wants to remind him that technically, whatever Watanuki wants undone had been entirely _his own fault _in the first place, but he's too busy staring at the small half-smile that quirks on Doumeki-who-isn't-Doumeki's face as Watanuki-who-isn't-Watanuki blushes red and swats his possessive hands away.

"You have something for us?" other-Watanuki asks, after clearing his throat so his voice won't squeak.

"Ah…y-yes," Watanuki-who-is-Watanuki responds, suddenly remembering himself and the mysterious little package he's been holding all afternoon. He chances a look over his double's shoulder at the casually lounging double of Doumeki, and starts to turn a little bit pink too, inexplicably. Other-Doumeki's smile broadens almost imperceptibly when he sees it.

It makes Doumeki-who-is-Doumeki want to instinctively step between himself-who-isn't-himself and Watanuki, but by then Watanuki is exchanging the package for a different one that other-Watanuki has on him. And then, in true Watanuki-who-is-Doumeki's-Watanuki-fashion, he promptly skitters backwards like prolonged exposure to other-Watanuki's mojo will somehow make him prone to random bouts of Doumeki-PDA as well.

Other-Doumeki notices, and just to be playful, grabs his Watanuki around the waist again, once the transaction is done. "Let's go back inside," Doumeki hears him murmur, and casts a quick glance to the second Watanuki, who is doing his very best to start walking away _right now_.

Doumeki moves to catch up with him, but not before he hears the, "I don't want you traipsing around my shop during business hours, you great Cre-mmmmph!" that is clearly the response to other-Doumeki's purred invitations.

Doumeki doesn't turn around to see what interrupted that little tirade (because he has a pretty good idea), and instead, he does his _very best_ not to think about the possessive he'd heard with regards to the shop, because that _would_ make too much sense, wouldn't it?

The entire way back—through the double doors, the hole in the fence, and around the mailbox, Watanuki keeps giving Doumeki strange, sideways looks before mentally scolding himself, looking straight ahead, and turning red in the face.

Doumeki wants to sigh.

When they meet Yuuko at the park with her package, she simply twitters greetings at them both and Watanuki thrusts the goods at her, all surly.

"I'm going to go wash my eyes out!" he exclaims to her, but really is talking to Doumeki and doing it this way so he doesn't have to look at Doumeki while he does. "Can you even wash your eyes clean after you've seen that sort of thing? I don't know! But I guess I'll find out! Because I'm going! To wash my eyes out! Right now!"

And then he storms off, presumably to wash his eyes out.

Yuuko flashes Doumeki a thumbs up then, and tells him, quite magnanimously, that "this one was on the house."

Though Doumeki suspects that he's paying for it anyway, via mortification and Yuuko's subsequent enjoyment of that mortification.

But he does manage to ask a question despite that mortification, just because he can't not.

He takes a deep breath. "Will he…" he begins, and for some reason the words won't come out quite right, "no matter what, will he…"

Yuuko smiles, enigmatic, suddenly serious. "A thousand different paths, and all lead to exactly where you need to be," she says, and flips her hair over her shoulder. "They just took a different route."

Silence.

Doumeki stares in the direction Watanuki stomped off in, and can't help but wonder where they're going.

Yuuko giggles, and creeps up on him, perhaps to better read his mind with. "Do you wish you knew?" she murmurs, another tantalizing what-if offered up to him.

But Doumeki knows the difference between need and desire, and that while this is something that he might desire; it's definitely not anything he needs. Not right now at least.

"I don't think so," he tells her evenly, because even if he doesn't know the destination and she does, he still knows the road he's going to take to get to wherever it is he's going.

So he excuses himself and goes after Watanuki, because who knows what kind of trouble the idiot is going to get himself into when he's all worked up like he is right now?

And he supposes (because he always ends up being honest with himself even when he doesn't exactly want to be), the two of them clearly have a lot of things to talk about as well.

Doumeki has always believed that the most direct path is the truest, after all.

**END**


End file.
